


double eclipse

by dulcebase



Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Gen, Immortal Blood (the book), brief mentions of vampire clan politics, i didn't write it to be straight though, realizing you don't know shit about your friends, you can actually technically read this as slash but it's very gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 19:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulcebase/pseuds/dulcebase
Summary: Usually, when you dig through someone's desk, it's their privacy that gets invaded.





	double eclipse

Dust resettles on the unmarred spine of a pristine leatherbound volume, the gentle glow of candlelight illuminating its gold embossing before the hand reaching in smothers the light entirely.

“The third drawer from the left,” calls the voice from the hall, yet the hand does not cease. In a few moments, its owner will stand in the doorway, chalice abandoned still half-full on the table without, wondering what the hold-up is. “I believed you were left-handed.”

“Ambidextrous,” lilts the reply, the book now in hand. He turns it over itself, gives it a precursory once-over before letting it drop with a heavy thud onto the desk's surface. “I see you put that to good use, hm?” A pause - “Now, don't give me that look. If you wanted to keep your political secrets truly secret, perhaps you shouldn't have asked me to go into your desk.”

The count crosses the floor in hurried step to the corner in question, his broad and looming shadow overtaking most light but for a single candle, wax dripping slowly onto the desk's raised hood. It fails to be imposing. “It doesn't count if the political secrets are those that you already know. I asked you to get a spell scroll.” His face wrinkles at the sight of the discovery, but it's forgotten at this point for a new one: a far slimmer book in just as perfect condition. “I believe Cyprian gave them to all of us out of some tradition, not to make any use of them.”

“He didn't,” the intruder replies flatly. He drops the copy of _Immortal Blood_ with little fanfare and closes the drawer with a flourish. Turning around has him nearly cornered. The recently disarmed small of his back hits the edge of the desk with a step back. “Now that you're here, I do suppose you can just get it yourself,” he says, and slips on silent foot over to the side.

The superior-quality dispel scroll is, indeed, in the third drawer to the left, though it would be more accurate to say the second to the right. The misstep — a mistake of common knowledge — gives him pause. The books are left abandoned on the desk. The count of Skingrad pivots on his heel. “You're the one who needed this, weren't you?”

“No, you merely offered.” And that was the issue with these sketchier types: you turn around for a moment and they've settled somewhere else. There's no difference in the man's frame and his shadow, dark twins on the pillar adjacent to him, casual in their lean to the point of near-disrespect, a foot propped and crossed at the ankle and lazily twisting to some unheard melody. The smile is what his shadow lacks, and it comes across as cheery as it does wicked. “Remarkably generous of you, by the way. Some might even suspect you of conspiracy.”

“I think having you in the same room, let alone in a civil conversation, would count to some as conspiracy, Vicente. Let's not forget ourselves here.” The assassin chuckles in response. The distraction of his own laughter fails to keep him from actually catching the parchment as it's tossed. It all feels impersonal. “Should I lend you my copy of the manifesto as well?” Silence falls. Well, that explains it.

“I never said I didn't have a copy of the Order Manifesto. I don't, not anymore. I think it's a moot point, all things considered.” Vicente is not a subtle man in intonation; the turn of humorlessness in his voice is blade-sharp. “You weren't alive when Cyprian inducted me, but he was _quite_ insistent I learn exactly how they run things. He's lucky I kept it up until he died.”

“You did?”

“Well, I figured I'd at least attempt to keep up appearances at least until someone finally got to him.”

“You do realize that makes you sound complicit.”

“Oh, Janus, I _so_ sincerely wish I was.” The smirk returns “I hope whoever got to him was merciless.”

He takes a breath, braces himself on the high-backed edge of his chair. Looks ahead; the assassin is preoccupied with looking the scroll over — something about knowing someone in dire need of it soon, and _you are a quite gifted mystic, my dearest friend, aren't you?_ — and seems to let the issue slip by with little fanfare. _Better now,_ he decides, _than never mention it again._

“So what does that have to do with _Immortal Blood?_ ” He doesn't need a hunter's hyperawareness to see the tension that snaps in every sinew.

“Cyprian hailed it as, if I remember correctly, the _'best source of information on the Order Cyrodiil Vampyrum's enemies,'_ and those _are_ his exact words. He expected you to familiarize yourself with it. I suppose he thought I was already familiar.” Vicente's eyes do not leave the parchment. “You know, I doubt that prisoners' swill Felmina harvests for you is any better cold.” Janus frowns.

“That seems a shallow reason to stiffen at the mention of a sleight by a dead man.” The scroll hits fabric with an audible slap. Now that the assassin has turned to face him, the glare — rosy, hungered and wide-eyed thing — feels as it itself is fanged.

“By Sithis, you aren't going to let this _go_ , are you?”

“You've never had another reason to act like this. You've told me you've killed siblings and still not acted like this.”

“When I tell you things, the intent isn't that you remember them.”

“You have to be kidding me.” Neither has noticed the pressure on the chair until he lets go and it clatters to the ground. The count of Skingrad crosses the room to the entrance to its antechamber. “Consider it payment for that, then,” he says, and promptly exits the room.

 

 

“Your copy is still authored by Anonymous, isn't it?” They've sat in silence until now, save for a quiet tête-à-tête on the quality of the gifted meal and how exactly the new prison system is working, and the decanter between them sits half-empty.

“I beg your pardon?” As he sets his chalice down, Janus's tongue flicks at a stray drop on the flat of his lip.

“ _Immortal Blood_. It seemed unopened, but I would hazard a fine guess as to say it's still technically unauthored,” Vicente lilts, and he takes it as a good sign. Bringing it up at all even more so.

“Yes,” the count intones, and moves first to refill his own cup — he's stopped with a hand laid with a gentle pressure on his knuckles before he can move to offer, brief and fleeting.

“I would have thought Cyprian would at least have a new copy printed for the Order. With how much he so adored parading Statilius around, at the barest of minimums.” Vicente withdraws, crossing his hands before him on the table. “But you knew that, didn't you? Lucan Statilius, Cyprian's left hand man and second in influence, wrote _Immortal Blood?_ He called himself a research novelist. Traveled all across Tamriel to find new information on his books, collecting as much knowledge as he could about the other clans as he went. Hence Cyprian's insistence, if he ever bothered to tell you. I think he'd been working on a new edition when his head rolled off his shoulders.”

The count's brow furrows as he follows. “So it seems you did know enough to not be briefed in full.”

“Lucan and I knew each other not long before I turned. I knew,” Vicente says cooly, “because I'm the one who killed him.”

At once the night seems dark and frigid, the cool winds brought in with the rolling summer storm cutting through the stone the rain beats against, filling the silence. Death has become a friend at their table, and one unavoidable. Its presence now is not of a comfort of meal or constant of existence; it has reared its head malicious and ghastly. Death does not sit with them now, only the echo of one of its shades. The death is never supposed to be their own, be it death of their first lives or not.

It occurs to Janus quite suddenly, how little he knows about the man across the table from him. He almost offers an apology, instead moves to once again refill the goblet opposite. Again, he's stopped by the hard press of callus on his knuckles. The hand does not move, and neither does he move his own. It feels almost as a comfort.

“It was three _hundred_ years ago,” the assassin sighs, finally, and the tension quickly dissipates with the exaggeration in his tone, the heavy lean in. “And over two hundred by the time the old bat found out. As soon as I dropped his name he agreed to honor my bloodline, though, imagine that! To think, if Lucan Statilius hadn't been so pompous as to tell me his real name before hiring me as a bloodbag, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

The information is a flood at once; the count pauses and lets it soak in as rain on parched soil. It's some sort of line to be crossed. Odd, how he hadn't realized the pass of information between them only flowed one way, and now that the barrier is broken he can't help but want to know _more_. Best then, that he'd started at the beginning. It's a thing that feels taboo between them, broken down now with a self-depricating laugh and a squeeze of the hand.

“I thought you only started your profession _after_ you'd turned,” he says carefully.

“I was a blade for hire, my dear, and the only difference between sellswords and assassins are that one has a more specialized set of skills. The difference between us and your guardsmen are that they operate _legally_.” A wink that fiendish ought not to have the amount of mirth it does. It breeds his chuckle like something infectious.

“I'm afraid this really isn't the best dinner conversation,” as if he hasn't been the one to bring up worse, yet Vicente bats the count's hand off of the decanter, drains the last of the dregs into his cup. “And we don't have too much time left for a pleasant one, do we?” The gold of his raised chalice glints like molten gold in the firelight. “Shall we say, then, to your health, my friend?”

“To my county, more like.”

“By this, one and the same.”

The chime rings pleasantly where their cups meet. The overflow that spills onto the stone below almost looks like wine.

 

**Author's Note:**

> nobody:  
> me: janus hassildor & vicente valtieri are FRIENDS and there's NOTHING you can do about it
> 
> a lot of the stuff about the cyrodiilic vampire clan is taken from the vile lair dlc; these two are involved with it but i'll talk about that more in other, more developed fics


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